*****

It was good tofeel the Texas sun on my skin again, even for the few minutes it took for me to walk from the parking lot to the classroom. Dressed in my vest top and shorts, I let the heat caress my bare shoulders, arms, and legs for as long as a white girl dared before burning, then stepped into the cool, air-conditioned lecture hall.

Julie was there, sat down near the front. She was from Dallas but took classes in San Antonio because she was majoring in fashion, a course they didn’t have in the northern Texas school. We’d both been taking photography as an elective since we began, both figuring it would be an advantage for our chosen career paths, both of them being very visually involving. Julie, though, had always been a keen photographer and was almost bouncing up and down in her seat with news.

“You’ll never guess who they’ve got to replace Professor Wilkins now he’s retired,” she told me.

“Laurence Silver,” I said.

“No!” she exclaimed. “He had his show extended and had to drop out at the last minute!”

Aside from the fact that they’d told us we had Silver last semester, he was the only famous photographer I could name, apart from Annie Leibovitz. I liked the class but I wasn’t trying to hold onto the names of those that had gone before me. I had an idea I only knew Silver because he was supposed to be teaching us and I was pretty sure they hadn’t got Annie to fill in now Laurence had dropped out. “Who then?” it was hard not to get caught up in her excitement.

“Caleb O’Connor!” she almost exploded as she told me. I kept smiling but the name meant very little to me. “You know him! He was like a rock star in the early Two-Thousands, photographing and sleeping with every beautiful woman in New York. His shoots were legendary, and so were his parties. He’s the original bad boy photographer. Plus, he’s married to Helena Carsen, the supermodel who said she’d never get out of bed for less than fifty thousand dollars!”

“I take it you’re a fan, then?” I teased her. It was fun to watch her normally straight and preppy exterior melt at the prospect of meeting one of her idols.

“Well, I… you know…” she pushed her eyeglasses up her nose a little and pouted her beautiful lips. “I appreciate his work. He’s always managed to bring out his female subjects’ innate sexuality and, while his pictures were risqué, they were never sordid or overtly sexualized…”

“Aha,” I could tell she was floundering a little. “So, he’s hot, then?”

Julie eventually managed to collect herself. “Yeah, he’s hot,” she admitted.

The rest of the class filed in slowly, and we all sat down to wait for our semester to begin. I guessed the news of our new hellraising teacher had spread because there was a tension in the air. I also noticed that one or two of the female students who were normally above such things had done their hair nice and put on some makeup. I was suddenly quite excited to meet this wonder boy that everyone else seemed to know about.

After almost ten minutes of waiting, the natives were just beginning to get restless.Then the lights dropped. The quick, excited hush that fell through the room really did put me in mind of a Guns N’ Roses concert.

We were all unexpectedly blinded by a bright white light on the huge projector screen that faced us. The groans were abruptly silenced, though, when a picture appeared there. It was Angelina Jolie, in her sexiest, pre-Tomb Raider days. She was nude, staring at the lens, a white blanket contrasting beautifully against her smooth, tanned skin, and strategically covering most of her modesty, save for one full, rounded breast. With those big eyes and that smoldering pout, she looked positively seductive, and she knew it.

There were a few wolf whistles from around the room, followed by a chorus of complaints as Angelina disappeared in favor of the blank, white screen again. Then another picture appeared. This time it showed a slim, naked blonde girl kneeling. Her face was red, her hair and makeup mussed with sweat and she held her mouth open to catch the cum shooting from the long, fat cock of the muscled guy standing over her. It was a nasty, almost gruesome looking scene that was hard to look at. In fact, I heard the girl behind us swear, get up, and storm out of the class.

“Well, that wasn’t quite the reaction I expected,” came a smooth, unflustered, masculine voice, “but it was, at least, a reaction.” The lights came back on and the porn disappeared from the overhead projector. “Good afternoon, everyone. I’m, apparently, Professor O’Connor. But, as that title makes me sound strangely like a Spiderman villain, let's stick with Caleb, shall we?” I followed the sound to find a man, maybe still on the good side of thirty-five, tall, broad-shouldered, dressed in only a loose-fitting white shirt and jeans, with a floppy, messy haircut, and a wide, self-depreciating smile.

“That’s your hero?” I whispered to Julie, who was shrinking down in her seat.

“That’s him,” she confirmed.

“Not bad.”

“Now, before an outraged faction of you go off and report me for warping your fragile little minds with pornography, I want you all to consider something,” Caleb continued, speaking right to the back of the class. “Remember the first picture. Adult, certainly, but beautiful.Socially acceptable, most definitely art, and taken by yours truly about fifteen years ago.” There was a smattering of applause, not least from Julie, sat next to me, but there was also ananxious, uneasy feeling in the air.

“Now, consider that second picture. Adult as well, pretty fucking far from socially acceptable, at least not outside of Paris, New York, or Los Angeles.Definitely not taken by me but I’m pretty sure I have some similar shots buried somewhere in my archives,” he smiled at the nervous round of laughter, “but, is it art?”

“No, it’s not,” I heard myself saying.

Caleb’s eyes leveled themselves at me and I couldn’t help feeling there was something familiar in his look. An amused, half-smile played around his lips. “And what makes you say that, Miss…?”

“Patterson,” I returned his smile. I could have sworn he was looking at me like he knew all my dirty secrets. “It’s not art because it's pornography.”

“That’s a very arbitrary statement,” he said. “Are you telling my pornography isn’t expressive? A lot of the porn I’ve seen is definitely creative.” There was another ripple of uncertain laughter. “I guess you could argue that it’s not really open to interpretation, but then neither was my photo of the lovely Angelina.”

It was hard to argue with him, but I still felt like I was right. “Porn is exploitative!” I cried, pleased to have pulled that one out when I needed it.

“Is it? Is that girl being exploited?” he asked the hall. There were a number of affirmative murmurs. “In the moment, I’m certain she knows she’s being filmed. She agreed to it and is being paid for posing.”

“So, by that rationale, your belittling the damage pornography does to women, both on the screen and off?” I accused him.

“I certainly am not!” he almost shouted. “I’m just wondering if you know how much the plants in Von Gogh’s Sunflowers were paid? Or the Tiger Shark in Damien Hurst’s The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living?Now, that’s exploitation.”His point was silly, but it was a point. If the girl was being exploited, she had at least agreed to it. “If something can’t be art if it’s being exploited, a lot of artists are going to find themselves unemployed.”

“But you’re now raising it as a philosophical question, instead of a moral one,” I told him.

“Am I?” he replied. “I didn’t suggest it was any type of question at all. If you answered it as a moral question, then that was your choice.”

“Okay, then!” I smiled wider, and he smiled with me. I had the feeling he knew what I was about to say and was relieved we’d finally got there. “It isn’t art because I say so. I don’t see it as art…”

“… so, therefore, it isn’t. Excellent, Miss Patterson. It’s all about interpretation, people!” he spoke to the whole room again. “You all accepted the first nude as art because I told you it was.And decided the second was not art because society tells you it’s not. Believe me, there have been plenty of people that told me that Angelina Jolie naked isn’t art. Blind people, I assume.

A louder, much more easy swirl of laughter swept around the room. I sat back, pleased with myself for arguing with him and coming, eventually to the right conclusion. Caleb carried on speaking on the importance of defining art for one’s self for a few more minutes, while Julie jabbed me in the ribs and offered me a sly smile.

“Now,” our professor continued, “I’m going to insist you take my word for it this time, but this is definitely art.”

I was checking my cell phone as he spoke, thinking about messaging Adam on my first success of the semester when Julie banged me in the ribs again.Then she did it once more, hard enough for me to yell and ask her what she was doing. She didn’t say anything. Her eyes remained transfixed by the screen and she simply pointed discretely upward.

“What?” I hissed as my eyes followed her gaze. Another picture was on display. It was another sexy girl in revealing clothing. No surprise there. But, as I began to take it in, the pose, the look, the hair, the naughty nurse’s outfit, it all looked familiar. “That’s m-!” mewas what I almost shouted out. I just managed to cover my own mouth before I finished the word.

I looked closer still. It was at the Wrecker’s Ball, that much was obvious. I was idly twisting the ends of my hair – which looked amazing, by the way; long, thick, and curly – between my fingers. I had an odd look in my eyes, something between mild disbelief and intense curiosity. It was strange. It was as though I was looking at someone else completely and, with that look on her face and that smoky makeup, this girl’s eyes just smoldered. Plus, her tongue protruded ever so slightly from her full, dark red lips, giving the most sensual pout and, as I looked further down, I saw the top of the nurse’s uniform was spread wide enough to show off an impressive cleavage and plunged so deeply there was even a hint of areola on show.

It felt like no one else had recognized me, or heard my little squeak of an outburst, apart from Julie. I kept my eyes forward so the other students wouldn’t make the connection. How did he get that picture? When was it even taken? I shouted inside my head.

However, as I finally looked back to Caleb. I realized there was one other person in the room who knew who the subject of that photo was. It was the man that took it, as he was screwing that stunning redheaded up against the wall of the club. The man that I’d been secretly wishing I’d let fuck me in that unisex bathroom.

And he was looking right at me, smiling.